Not long ago, journalists were expected to work stories by getting out of the office and tracking them down. The new breed of online journalists who have replaced them sit on their butts, monitoring tweets in the hope that some celebrity or politician will say something stupid so they can trash them. This is what, in an age of minute budgets, passes for journalism.
The balance of labor-management relations has shifted so far in favor of employers that workers have no leverage whatsoever in salary and other negotiations. It’s a buyer’s market. Whatever opportunity presents itself, bosses will exploit to make us work harder and longer for smaller salaries.
Al Qaeda has ejected a Syrian terrorist subsidiary. Which makes the Syrians exempt from attack by the United States. What to do?
Top NFL draft pick Michael Sam came out as gay, prompting a welcome from the league but also old-fashioned concerns by football players and fans about the possibility that the totally-not-homoerotic locker rooms of the totally-not-gay profession of football might become an uncomfortable place…a hostile work environment for straight men. One asked: how should I react if a gay dude looks at me? Here’s how.
President Obama and the Democrats have finally decided, five years after his election, to begin talking about the issue of income inequality, which has been increasing since the early 1970s. But their rhetoric makes it sound like inequality is a weird byproduct of capitalism when, in fact, it is a key feature of an economic system that relies on poverty and exploitation. This is the best system ever conceived?
Even if you trust the Obama Administration with NSA programs that see everything we do online, drones that can blow us up and an executive order that allows the President to maintain a kill list of anyone he wants, anywhere he wants, they won’t always be in charge. How will you feel about those powers when someone like the paranoid Dick Nixon is in charge?
What if Nazi Germany had won World War II? Things might look quite as different as you might think. This time: the Leader wants to close a concentration camp, but blames Congress for not being able to do so.
When Generation Xers were young, Baby Boomers refused to hire them. Now that Baby Boomers’ children are in charge of hiring at tech companies, they won’t hire Gen Xers because they’re too old. No matter what they do, Gen Xers are doomed.
For the Pentagon, ending the war in Afghanistan means leaving 10,000 troops there. Where did they learn math?
Obama wants to close Gitmo. He wants to get rid of drones. He wants to stop NSA spying. But it’s so hard! Maybe the Ghost of Pre-9/11 has the answer.
